natmanhan wrote:Yes, there is the alleged link between GPA higher GPAs and sports success. And I think it's real, purely because my school required at least a 2.0 to play sports. So, naturally if you are into sports you are going to want to maintain good grades. It does not mean that playing sports makes you more intelligent, although exercising regularly can help improve brain function, but you don't need some asshole yelling at you to do that.
Not to mention you can always take easy classes to stay in a sport. I know because I did that in high school, although not to stay in my sport although I was in one.
I also hate the huge structures created to support them, both organizations and physical structures. The poor cost benefit relationship in monetary terms makes new stadiums a terrible idea in this economy, yet there are probably still new ones being constructed. Schools do not need massive meat head complexes while they can't afford new textbooks. And yes, the priorities DO get that screwed up. My friend told me. She went to Dansville High School in Michigan.
Studies have shown that there is a correlation between the teaching of music and higher reading scores. Yet we don't see the massive infusion of money for teaching music in elementary schools. And, in fact, the first item that gets cut when the school budget gets tight is the fine arts, including music. You never hear of the athletic department being pared down. As Mr. Holland says in
Mr. Holland's Opus, "When they cut the football program, it will be the end of civilization as we know it."
Just so the reader will know that I don't have a background in the fine arts or a personal stake in their promotion, I never had an interest in them, except for being a band student in junior high and high school. And, in fact, by the time I was a junior in high school, I was sick and tired of band.
If I may digress with another issue, in the late spring of my senior year in high school, my band director announced to the class that we were going to put on a concert for the senior class in the school auditorium right in the middle of a school day.
The entire senior class was going to be required to attend our concert. I thought at the time, "No, Mr. Wilson (not his real surname)! Are you out of your mind? Who came up with the lousy idea of
forcing my fellow seniors to attend a school band concert when the only concert they'd ever want to attend is a
rock concert? They'll be resentful and bored out of their minds!" When we gave the concert to my fellow seniors, I actually felt
embarrassed because I did not want to impose
the school band upon unwilling classmates, more than a few of whom dismissed band students as "band fairies." As it turned out, we didn't play all that well; and Mr. Wilson (who, years later, would be indicted for embezzlement as the superintendent in another school district, despite his prim and proper but self-righteous image) lost his temper and threw his baton at us. So, you can understand why I'm personally OPPOSED to high-school students being forced to attend football pep rallies during the school day. I say let attendance at the pep rallies be
voluntary, and let them be held AFTER school!